by Denis A. Conroy for the Saker blog
Once upon a time, folk thinking…or folk thinkers…pioneered human development. Once upon a time it was the philosopher, poet, scientist, dramatist and musician who did the heavy lifting. Once upon a time, before institutions co-opted human imagination, it was the ingenuity of individuals that led to the creation of perspectives complimentary to the interests of the ‘folk’ and societal development. One such individual was Plato. Plato however, was an imaginative thinker working within the limits of an aesthete laboratory of mindfulness.
Concepts of democracy are fairly straightforward in Plato’s thinking, representing the need to put in place narratives promoting intelligent world-views for the polity. Plato was also an individual who would have understood that the choices we make relate to our ability to achieve what we want. The challenge was how to establish a form of rule managed by people who purported to know what people needed. Ruminations of this kind took centre stage before the concept of grass-roots organization entered the modern lexicon.
But history shows that great ideas have a habit of being vacuumed up by hierarchical interests ready to exploit opportunities in the real world. Democracy in Classical Athens, as is the case in the modern world, meant establishing inclusive governance in one form or another…the necessity of compromise… equality for all persons… majority rule with minority rights etc, etc. But the concept of democracy would remain as playdough in Plato’s mind until the concept of grass-roots culture found its voice.
So, what was it that corrupted democracy when it finally took root in America? Did institutional assertiveness become ‘the sow that eats its farrow’? When the power of thought transfers from the fertile imagination of an individual to become the property of an institution, are the assessments that subsequently grade these thoughts or ideas made in accordance with the need to have them accede to the authority of officialdom exercising power?
Therefore, transferring ideas that originate in the ‘folk’ polity become fraught with problems once they are separated from their source. Once they transfer to corporate institutions, they invariably mutate and blend in with asset-landscapes.
So was the case in the American marketplace. Things began hotting up as millions of people immigrated into this vastly resourceful country. Wealth was destined to fall into the hands of a group of individuals adept in skulduggery as entrepreneurial hype took laissez-faire economics to new heights. These newcomers, wonderstruck by the pace of development in their new homeland would acquire an insular materialistic view of reality founded on notions of their own exceptionality. The majority of them worked hard and had little time to think of anything else…Congress was there for the thinking!
Over time, perspectives marinated in legalese, propaganda and manufactured hysteria of the “if you don’t get ‘them’ out there first, ‘they’ll’ come here and get you” kind, became the harbingers of the repressive society. America was becoming a threatened and threatening culture under the auspices of corporative power.
Performance driven demi-gods, capitalising on opportunities accompanying their celebrity status as corporate-behemoths, became ever more vocal in the charade that came to be known as American culture. The pantomime that elevated the vulgar rich to regions beyond the purview of the ‘folk’, illustrated how a collection of insouciant chewing gum ‘democratic-republicans-shysters’ could lead a gullible public into accepting aggression and violence as the American way of doing business.
Submitting to the loquacious arrogance delivered to them via patriotic mumbo-jumbo, plus the pseudo-religious justifications fed to them by splenetic zealots, the dead-in-the-head cultural zombies elected to support and actively chew up the lives of non-white people here, there, and everywhere became part of the American team ‘doing it’ for god and flag. In so doing, the American population at large became complicit in genocide.
They did all this as easily as blowing a chewing-gum bubble, and since bloviation had been elevated to the level of a craft, racial intimidation would inevitable become its forte. There were ‘bubbles’ all over the place; white supremacy, economic chicanery, the war machine, the surveillance industry… ego, and ever more ego creating further bubbles fostering delusional parentheses supporting the American daddy-knows-best psyche they had chosen to be a part of. In time, it would be their choice to demonstrate their abilities in warfare that would define their national character and their very own brand of psychopathic ‘democracy’. Cynical American businessmen knew that a peace-bubble would produce the wrong kind of dividends, so they gave it the heave-ho… an anti-war movement was for pussies.
Which brings us to question the parenthetic violence that defines America culture. It is so obviously a culture that holds nothing to be sacred…least of all life. The toll on little brown bodies shredded by American air power barely rates a mention at home.
For example, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on hearing of the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi…the ruler of a well-functioning state…she shared a laugh with a television news reporter and had this to say, “We came, we saw, he died”…which sounds like Americans could pull from their arses the right to adjudge all those who were not of their stripe as justification for striking them down…and besides, violence, the backbone of their culture, had become fun and part of their political narrative, ergo the fat that fed the frat. Strangest of all, the destruction that America wrought on Libya was “water off the duck’s back” at home.
Clearly, American culture pays lip service to human rights, but its record of brutal military incursions into other people’s countries show a different story. What we see instead, is America’s indifference to human life. Its population shows no remorse in having slaughtered millions of non-white people. Is it because it has turned itself into a great empty shell where nothing is sacred, least of all life? Time after time the ‘people’ elect Presidents who will talk-the-talk of ‘America as leader of the free democratic world’, but end up behaving like they own it.
They just want to hear that America is forging ahead…regardless of the means used…to be assured that the ‘salad-days’ of the new nation…now empire…will ‘reign’ forever as a dollar democracy that gobbles up the major portion of the global pizza. So, within the great empty shell where nothing is sacred, the American population, devoid of any real inner life, must keep looking to their T.V. screens (or to Hollywood) for conformation of their identity. Having lost their voice, the ‘people’ must turn to the screen…big or small…to learn what the masters of the universe…their celebrities…are doing in keeping them ahead of the game.
However, what they get from their screens or from their ‘art’ forms is an unending stream of twaddle dished up as rheumy existential parentheses used to identify the bleak cultural landscape of divisiveness, where misbegotten polarities extend from pent-house posh to the carceral system, and the grey areas in-between that mark the limits of their failed democracy.
So, what the disenfranchised masses mainly get from their screens, is an impression that they are part of a winner-take-all culture, and when George Bush appears on screen admonishing Saddam Hussein…and lying through his teeth about the intentions of that individual…the gullible public must swallow all institutional interpretations verbatim. The godfathers of the system…the ‘parent-folk’…insist that someone who is not performing for the American Brand must be evil…therefore, if they’re not with us, they’re against us.
American rhetoric comes in many forms, but nowhere is it ever self-questioning. In May of 1996, Sixty Minutes aired an interview with Madeleine Albright, who at the time was Clinton’s UN ambassador. The subject was the effectiveness of sanctions on Iraq…the citizens of Iraq. Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, “We have heard that a half-million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And-and, you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright replied, “I think it is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”
Here, Madame la Albright’s beautifully glib words will do the devil the honour of pulling him by the tail for sure…but, who is the ‘we’ here? Is the ‘we’ the people who insist that the rest of the world should only do business with ‘we’…and strictly on terms that suit ‘we’? But realistically speaking, America, that great empty shell where nothing is sacred, cannot possibly qualify as parent (parenthesis) of the future…it is too sterile and besides, its gum chewers eschew all poetic sensibility.
At what point did the United States of America become so immersed in the vulgar parentheses that define its culture, that it unquestioningly accepted violence as an end in itself? A union of corporate behemoths had come into being, sitting atop a pliant population eager to partake of the trappings of a weaponized culture lauding exceptionality, while pillaging one vulnerable country after another with impunity…it became acceptable because it was good for jobs, though outrageously immoral!
Controlling the legislature to enact laws that put evermore money in their own pockets, the architects of the greatest scam on earth…the ‘we’…become ever more shameless in dealing with the commons. Contending the need for higher tariffs to tax the poor became another way of immersing the snouts of the ‘we’ ever more deeply into the institutional swill. In time the Pentagon would become the paramour of the pork-barrel industry.
To keep American culture viable, the powers-that-be decided to capitalise on capitalism. They corporatized language while corporatizing the means of production. The architects of the system, in decreeing culture to be a capitalist construct, branded it so, thereby consigning the polity to the status of an appendage.
Allegiance to this brand of capitalism would eventually become synonymous with gutless forms of patriotism. When peace-prize winning President Obama sidled into the role of warmonger de jour and directed NATO to threaten Russia with Armageddon, the gormless American public got behind his stance, believing that we…in thrall to the ‘we’ above them…were being threatened by some implacable force other than our own implacable need to obliterate all other brands challenging our right to global dominance.
In time, America adopted the practice of speaking on behalf of the ‘West’…the Anglo Zionist Business-West no less…and came to believe that all cultures beyond their own narrow purview were backward ones. They believed that they were lacking in technical acumen, so they thought it was time to baptise them in the waters of American hegemony as a way of saving them from themselves. Wisdom was in the eye of the beholder, and the beholders believed that the world beyond washing-machines, chewing-gum, B 29’s and military aggression was where terrorists roamed the sand dunes of the Badlands seeking to find water for their camels, only to find oil instead.
How could Plato have possibly seen the extent to which peer group pressure, in the context of institutional power, could annihilate individual creativity in the pursuit of statehood. The academy he belonged in had yet to serve a master or succumb to the pressure of du jour political particularism. Besides, the concept of grass-roots was waiting in the wings for the opportunity to find a voice…as is still the case…mainly.
In America, fealty to either the logo of the red-white and blue Republican elephant or the Democratic donkey logo became one and the same thing. Disinterring the ghost of medievalism became part and parcel of America’s penchant for corporate rule. A unilateralists perspective would save one from discourse and dispense with traditional alliances. America was a gold mine and the miners were corporation men.
The two halves of the political process had morphed into a monstrous duopoly… a monstrous canine licking its red-and-blue balls became the spectre that would stifle the American dream…simply because corporatization had taken root in the land. A fractious Sorcerer’s Apprentice style business model committed to expediting its business lust commenced to use every means at its disposal to extract what was extractable from the workforce and the wilderness…in time, this practice would become the centre piece of American Foreign Policy… fracking, fucking and fudging its way to becoming an even Greater American empty shell trying to extend its odious culture across the world.
But try as it may, the bully-sporting-full-spectrum-biceps demonized its adversaries, positioning its 800 military bases across the world to prop up its ‘economic’ bubbles with shonky deals. Swaggering across the globe as leader of a ‘West’ in decline, this self-proclaimed leadership role looks more tatty by the year. It’s not the laugh of Hillary Clinton we hear, but it may just be the harbinger of the last laugh.
Fortunately, there are brave men and women in America who still try to expose truth to the light of day. “The Lies of Our (Financial) Times”, by James Petras, Dissident Voice, October 4th, 2018, is a good example of same.
Denis A. Conroy,
Freelance Writer,
Australia
Denis A. Conroy trying to come to terms with the fact that the ‘West’ has been ruled by organized crime for many centuries.
Perhaps the West is trying to come to terms with the fact that our comfortable lifestyles are a result of genocide, slavery, and fossil fuels leading to the destruction of life as we know it.
Trying to come to terms
While simultaneously carpet bombing yemen starving 90% of the population, having a torture compound where hundred of thousands yemenis periched
In syria defending terrorist and training child rapists and head choppers and smugling them from country to country for future reuse.
Giving hundreds of billions to the largest aparthaied state of our time & blocking any un resolution that might slightly lessen the suffering of people suffering an agonizingly slow genocide where they see their children murdered & emprisoned where their culture & their history and their homes is being destroyed before their eyes while the whole world watches on and the west pats itself on the back for being such a civilized & advanced culture
Yes perhaps the west is coming to terms with it
Coming to terms with the fact that after practising genocide and massacre for the past 4 centuries
And only building by pillaging and burning the work and lives of the other, they have finally finally realised that murder is their legacy its their tradition this is their way of life
How can i succeed? By stepping on someone else’s back by stealing his land and ressources
How do i steal his ressources? Well my forefathers used the tried and true method of swift efficent genocide, how else could we empty out a whole continent?
But since overt slavery and genocide is so passe we have to use the second more convenient method of the 20th century
Having control over the media and slowly but surely snuffing the locals.
Concentration camps, noooo its called open air prison for our own security and by their choosing.
Trail of tears, too heavy handed, how about poisoning water and crops and blocking any of the sick for leaving thus creating a population where 40% are sick of cancer but cant get treatement
Look man, wince you on this website it means that there is a big big chance that you are aware. So please dont kid yourself.
pompeo said today that all middle east countries should look like israel.that this reptile is secretary of state for the most “odious culture” on planet earth says it all.
By that he meant arab states should like like israhell as in all arabs in enslavement camps in open air prisons slowly getting wiped out in an agonizing slow genocide
Thank you for that. I consider that all of the folks working for the USSA Federal government, working for Monsanto, GE, Raytheon, et al, are all personally responsible and guilty for what is happening in the world today. Personally responsible! No more free passes for those folks.
Odious culture? That’s being kind.
Yes, it’s been this way for a long time. And in all that time of creating “civilization” we have not found a way out of the few oppressing the many – Plato and many other brilliant thinkers notwithstanding.
It is also a culture of lies led by Trump the liar in chief.
The Saker asks:
“So, what was it that corrupted democracy when it finally took root in America? Did institutional assertiveness become ‘the sow that eats its farrow’?(…)”
The answer is that ‘democracy’ had a very bad reputation amongst parts of the elites of the thirteen colonies. I seem to remember that even Plato said that it was Sparta that had the better ‘constitution’, i.e. way of organizing the citzenry — which by definition meant the part of the population that bore weapons + their un-public spauses. (Or was it Aristotle who thaugt so?)
Whenever a grandee of Athens was ostrasized by his ungrateful companions in the Athenian polity (whom he regarded as rubble) he would often spend the greater period of his banishment i Lakemoania (Sparta) intreaging and conspiering against the majority of the athenians.
The “Founding Fathers” of the North American polity thus named their Union “Republic” and not a ‘democracy’. What those gays admired was Rome or Venice — both republics — and not the Athenian populist conception of freedom.
In the late 18th century, it was of course impossible to have a true national democracy. True democracy did exist in America, but it was on the scale of the Town Meetings of the New England towns. In a small group like that, it was of course quite possible to have a Town Meeting at which everyone could come and express their views and have a say and a vote on policy.
But, when travel was by horsepower, or windpower upon sails, it was quite impossible to gather the whole nation together to debate and make decisions in a true democracy. If it took a week or several for news or a letter to travel to a nation’s capital, then any form of national government could not be a true democracy. Of course, the only pratical solution was for the people to elect Representatives to travel to Washington, and such a form of government was properly called a “republic” and not the democracies seen in the Town Halls.
Of course, the people of that time opposed and at first rejected this central government, and that was one of the reasons cited. It was too far away and too unaccountable. The US constitution was originally rejected by the American people. It required something like 9 or 10 of the states to approve it to go into effect, and it came up one short. There are books out there called “The Anti-Federalist Papers” which documents the arguments against the constitution as a counterpoint to the “Federalist” papers which argued for it.
This was the origination of the Bill of Rights, or the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. The lack of such guarantees of basic rights was one of the powerful arguments used to stop the adoption of that Constitution. The addition was enough to get one more state to approve the Constitution.
Which is quite interesting as since the Bill of Rights was an essential part of the deal, and the original Constitution was rejected without them, it would seem that a government that violates the Bill of Rights is in turn rejected the whole reason the government exists in the first place.
Its also interesting in that now the world has advanced and progressed to the point where a true national democracy could actually exist. Use modern communications to let everyone debate and vote on national policies, as now there is no longer a need to ride a horse to Washington to do so.
The founders tried to limit the power of the Executive to go to war by vesting that power in the Congress. Now, with modern technology, we could do much better, and require a national referendum to be approved before the nation went to war.
I know everyone likes to rant about how awful the slave-holding Founding Fathers were and how they hated Democracy. And people like these little semantic discussions about Democracy and a Republic. But America is a Republic simply because 18th century travel and communication technology would not allow a Democracy.
Even then, if America was actually following the rules laid out in its Constituion, and honoring the rights of its citizens in the Bill of Rights that were essential to the government being created, then America would not be acting as it does today. The rich and the powerful and corporations have slowly hacked away at the basic ground rules of the Republic to the point where it no longer resembles or functions as the Founders designed it. A few of those changes would be…..
— Corporations have the same right as people.
— The Federal government has used its grant to “legislate interstate commerce” to far, far exceed the powers it was supposed to have.
— The income tax is constitutionally questionable. Thus so are the massive sums of money that the Federal government has to spend.
— Much more power was supposed to reside in the State governments and thus closer to the people.
— The Founders knew that the power to declare war was a very important power used by governments to suppress liberty. They tried hard to limit that power, requiring the approval of both houses of Congress to go to war. That basic protection of Liberty was thrown out during the Korean War, and the USA has not officially declared war since.
— The system was changed from One Person = One Vote to One Dollar = One vote with the ridiculous equation of money with free speech.
— The Bill of Rights is now used as toilet paper in Washington DC. The approval of a Supreme Court judge recently who helped organize and justify mass surveilence on the American people, who likes and approves of torture put a final nail into that coffin.
Today, we could do better and actually implement a national or even world democracy. Modern communications would allow it. But the American Republic would be better if it even came close to following the rules that were laid down at the beginning.
At this time, America is a rogue state ruled by an oligarchical government. Words like Democracy or Republic have nothing to do with it, and probably should not be slandered by reference to America.
Democracy: “Two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for lunch”. If you can convince/bribe a simple majority to steal from the minority, basic law means nothing whether the “democracy” is local or “national”. You SHOULD be able to vote for an officeholder to enforce “basic law” to protect your rights those laws guarantee ie not being robbed or killed. The “original” un-amended beyond the first 10 Amendments U.S. Constitution created “THESE” United States. After the (un) Civil War (actually a revolution) and 1913’s 16th Amendment (tax on income), 17th Amendment (direct election, democracy, of U.S. Senators removed State Legislature’s power over the Executive and Treaties) and the Federal Reserve Act giving the control of the currency over to a private corporation, we became “THE” United States. The House of Representatives from the beginning was the only directly elected National office because that’s where all spending bills originate; power of the purse. The People’s House. The Electoral College is the only thing in the way of a National Democracy and the destruction of the rights of ANY minority and State’s power. Karl Marx said “The straightest path to socialism is democracy”. Grease that path with debt based currency to purchase a “majority” and yes, you WILL have a “rogue State” and rule by oligarchy. They sent me to war in 66′.
How Synchronistic!
I just spent Oct 7 and 8 on Catalina Island …a part of Los Angeles County….purchased in 1919 by William Wrigley, Jr. the chewing gum magnate…..who brought his Chicago Cubs there for spring training. And built a huge memorial…to himself….atop a valley with Botanical Gardens….. looking north and northeast to Palos Verdes Peninsula, Los Angeles, and Newport Beach.
The island made ready use of various varieties of Eucalyptus trees from Australia for securing hillside roads from erosion and providing shade.
The Spanish arrived a long time before Wrigley Chewing Gum, removed the native Indians to the mainland and ruined the island’s plant life with goats….AND sheep! Sound familiar??
I think this story may be a standout microcosmic example, because of the usefulness of chewing gum metaphor, of what occurred in the cases of Europeans driven by ego and material gain to “strike it rich” not only in North America and South America….but also in Australia and other places…where the natives had little means of preventing the Europeans’ “Luck”, “grit” and ambition. The overwhelming majority were “doers” with very little time for Plato’s or anyone else’s Love of Wisdom.
But I don’t think the Chewing Gum King was the worst of the worst. He did a few decent things, but all his deeds and wealth leave him a midget of thought in comparison to Plato.
It’s hard to imagine Plato or anyone else depicted in Raphael di Sanzio’s School of Athens with wads of gum in their teeth, chewing away. It doesn’t make for very enlightened “dialogue” but sheepish cud-chewing serves the vices of Democracy (whose evils the founders DID warn of) quite well indeed!
No wonder The Republic is still a distant dream! Realization of a dream requires the waking state.
Now, TTurn it up!
https://youtu.be/wIaDcwVYMi8?t=137 The Spell of Democracy
“You are under a spell.”
Q: So, what was it that corrupted democracy when it finally took root in America?
A: Greedy Euro-squatters, hell-bent on land-grabbing, genocide, and ecocide. Utter fake-refugees the whole lot.
Fair enough?
”Time after time the ‘people’ elect Presidents who will talk-the-talk of ‘America as leader of the free democratic world’, but end up behaving like they own it.”
Yes, and that’s perfectly in lockstep with the ideological contortions characteristic of Oppressor Nations (= the West, for all practical intents and purposes).
Proof: For all their self-pitying psychobabble about taxes, immigration, outsourcing etc. the Pindos are not so deluded (yet) to believe that they really can do without their beloved Big Government ”taking care” of other peoples’ natural resources and labour output. Pindos dearly yearn for all the repression, war, and chauvinism they vote for and more — and rightly so. Their living standards would drop enormously as soon as their lifestyles begin to reach an equilibrium with the rest of the planet, and they know it. Sure, militant parasites do personify ’false consciousness’, but never at the expense of their survival instincts. Hence, when American Native political activist Ward LeRoy Churchill rhetorically asked ”Why by the way did it take Arabs to do what people here should have done a long time ago?” and — correctly — likened the 911 victims to ”Little Eichmanns” in their glorious service of Empire, he hit a nerve to put it mildly.
”What we see instead, is America’s indifference to human life. Its population shows no remorse in having slaughtered millions of non-white people. Is it because it has turned itself into a great empty shell where nothing is sacred, least of all life?”
Yes, Western — especially US — corporate fascist misculture breeds indifference to, even total contempt of, life itself. Love, honesty, happiness, and friendship become anathema to people hooked on Western infotainment. As Anders Behring Breivik and the perpetrators of all the schoolyard shooting sprees in the US show, this is becoming a menace to the sated Western populations as well. Breivik and his US counterparts, for all their endorsement of ’European values’, ’Constitution this, amendment that’ and what-have-you, were not interested in the Zionazis’ glorious ’Humanitarian interventions’, but took action at home instead, killing well-off middle class people regardless of gender and complexion. Lord the Almighty works in strange and wondrous ways.
“where nothing is sacred, least of all life?”
When you have a culture that has not only made a commerce of murder and genocide and war but build everything they pride themselves on with it.
Of course they dont have respect for human life thats their trade and their currency.
Well at least others’ lives.
But when they take a taste of their own medicine and repercussions are getting closer and closer to home now they start getting antsy.
Getting antsy not as in questing the increasingly flimsy propaganda force fed to them daily and the increasing aberrations and horros inflicted in their name, with their money & sometimes with their tacit agreement but by doubling down and this time scotch taping the wool over their own eyes and delving deaper into petty hedonistoc life choices.
Where I come from there is this nugget of wisdom:
Fear only one man. The one who doesnt fear God.
While this saying has many interpretation and facets one of them is:
A person who doesnt fear God, is a person who doesn’t believe in the afterlife, ergo this person believes that this life is the end goal. Then every action is made with only gratification in this world and with no consequences later on. So this is person who has no limits and no ground rules.
This person is capabale of doing anything in order to get his desires.
Now imagine a culture that encourages and gratifies excess and the pleasing of ones earthly desires. But treates sucess and monetary gain and power as the ultimate victory regardless of the origin or the methods used
Sometime long ago in Greece, on the subject of “do Gods exist or not” one of the philosophers said:
“How come you, the philosophers who claim not to believe in Gods, call on them “the Gods” to save you when your ship is sinking?”
Plato:
“O, ye gods, grant us what is good whether we pray for it or not, but keep evil from us even though we pray for it.’
On the subject of “gum chewing”, while you brought up Platon, I would like to present a video regarding philosophy. The young men shows and explains two statements on the same subject, one by Sokrates and one by Plutarch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuXn6aaXmA
Checkout 06:44 minute.
He (the presenter) translates the statements, and what I say here is my short presentation: “No amount of degrees will make you a smart (an intelligent) person. What makes you a smart (an intelligent) person is your possessed knowledge and how you use it.”